Dave Bender, Executive Director of Compass Mark, is optimistic about the potential for addiction treatment services to improve quality of life in Lancaster County. According to Bender, “a stronger society” can be built by working to inform and empower individuals in their personal choices regarding addiction, rather than merely imposing prohibitive laws.

However, Bender would assert, it is the absence of this approach on the State level that brings about the bulk of Compass Mark’s challenges.

According to Bender,

“Substance abuse has always been treated as a moral issue and as a criminal justice issue, and it’s rarely been looked at as a public health issue….For the most part, the typical elected official—whether you’re talking about the State or Federal level—rarely sees this as a public health issue….”

In the mid-1980s, Compass Mark spoke out against mandatory sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders, Bender said. Such legislation was emblematic of an expensive tendency toward incarceration as a manner of dealing with drug addiction and distribution: “Back then,” Bender noted, “The state prison budget was $250 million a year; now it’s $1.8 billion and growing rapidly.”

From Bender’s perspective, a direct way to abate these swelling prison costs would be for the State to place a definitive cap on such expenditures: “Somebody at the State level has got to have the courage to begin to cap that figure,” which would necessitate progressive investment in reentry, treatment, and harm reduction initiatives—which have all been known to reduce the need for incarceration.

But the failure of State legislators to complete a budget for the current fiscal year has only further compounded the challenges for treatment organizations like Compass Mark. In the absence of funding from both the State and Federal Government (which passes through the State), Compass Mark “could end up closing down in a month,” Bender said. And the work of planning school programs for the coming year has been multiplied by uncertainty of funding: “We have to come up with three plans: One plan for no money, one plan for some money, and one plan for the money that we got last year.”

With Harrisburg stalemated over a $3.2 billion budget gap, and with $1.8 billion State dollars tied up in corrections, Bender cannot help but observe a recurring theme:

“We’re helping the State Budget by reducing recidivism, which means we’re definitely helping that $1.8 billion prison budget from getting bigger….So we’re reducing those numbers, but by cutting us off, and cutting off that prevention that should continue, they’re just going to be looking at a prison budget that’s $2.5 billion to $3 billion ten years from now.”

Since its inception (then as the “Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse”) in 1966, Compass Mark has been seeking to work “ahead of the curve” in providing addiction treatment and prevention services in Lancaster County. In the early years, according to Executive Director Dave Bender, this meant setting up Lancaster’s first detox, halfway house, and residential counseling program. Today, Compass Mark has shifted most of its efforts to a prevention and early intervention strategy, focusing on the County’s youth.

In all of Lancaster’s 16 school districts, Compass Mark runs a variety of programs dealing not only with drugs and alcohol, but also engaging troubled students in the ability to solve problems and cope with the difficulties of life. Out of the 4,000 students expected to go through such programs this year, there will be about 600 involved with Compass Mark’s “Skills for Life” program, which is reserved for students with drug and alcohol related problems.

Using alcohol offenses as an example, Bender noted that student recidivism has been reduced from 30% to 3% through “Skills for Life”:

“District judges used to tell us that they would get repeat offenses over and over. Kids would go out, get busted, pay the fine, go out, drink again, get busted, pay the fine….One judge said that there was a kid who came back before him 13 times. He said that now, since referring [offenders] to our program, it’s rare that he gets a second offense, and he can’t even remember getting a third offense.”

Students are referred to the program by either a district judge or school personnel, usually in response to a substance related violation. “Skills for Life” requires that each student attend a weekly group meeting for about one month.

The groups are led by recovering addicts who often surprise the students attending with their level of respect and empathy. The central goal of these groups is to facilitate genuine discussion among the attendees about the personal challenges and choices that they each face: “It’s basically kids holding up mirrors to each other,” Bender said.

Often times, the meetings may not directly touch on the topic of drugs and alcohol at all: “We don’t talk so much about the substance,” Bender said, “What we’ll talk about is building decision-making skills, coping skills, stress-management skills, problem-solving skills. We’re helping kids and adults function with life, and be able to make reasonable, rational choices with what they decide to put into their bodies.”

Personal choice is a cornerstone to Compass Mark’s approach. To demonstrate this value, Bender mentioned the topic of random student drug testing: “People are usually surprised to hear that—for the most part—we are not in favor of random drug testing in schools….It’s taking the responsibility away from kids to develop the skills to help each other make choices, and it’s taking the power away from the individual to make choices.”

Out of each 12 student group, Bender estimates that two students are typically considered for additional in-patient or out-patient rehab treatment.

The purpose of “Skills for Life” is not necessarily to eradicate all presence of drugs or alcohol from the lives of these students. Bender emphasized that this program exists to help students learn to make responsible choices and reduce the harmful effects of these substances where necessary. This approach, according to Bender, falls directly in line with the organization’s mission to provide those in need with a “Compass” to help them locate the next step in improving their quality of life.